We are aware that cancer is the most dreadful disease and is the second death causing disease across the world. Irrespective of getting scared, everyone has to know about the information of cancer for better understanding and we never tend to feel, it’s not my cup of tea.
Basic human thought
Firstly we doubt how old cancer is? Actually cancer is as old as the cell, which originates some billion years ago, during the course of evolution. In evolution, a cell originates as a unicellular organism, then changed to multicellular organisms and so on to highly evolved human beings.
Cancer is a property of excessive growth that is present in all cells from unicellular to multicellular and so on to humans. So we have to accept the idea that cancer is present within us through our birth.
Evolutionary model
As we know oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes are always in the cell helps in promoting and controlling growth simultaneously. As like in evolution, new genes are also developed from old genes for some functions in the cell and the old genes will be in an inactive state in the cell genome. Due to various factors from the environment, if new genes are damaged, then old genes will become active and perform their functions.
Even though humans are made of multicellular cells, which have controlled growth whereas cells of unicellular organisms can divide continuously until resources for growth are not available. This nature is present in human cells in a hidden inactive state in the cell genome.
This hidden nature of unicellularity is triggered due to the exposure of various cancer causing environmental factors and induces rapid growth to form lumps that may lead to cancers.
Alikeness of Cancer and Unicellular cells
Properties of a cancer cell and unicellular cell are alike such as continuous rapid growth, immortal, able to move and spread, and perform glycolysis (warburg effect).
By this, we can conclude that cancer is as ancient as the cell and it happens within the cell itself and it is not an alien to the cell. We need to stick to the fact that environmental factors (diet, lifestyle, and exposure) only influence the cell to develop cancers.
